Will Employers Amp Up Hybrid to Full Return to Office This Fall?

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We are currently in the heart of summer where employees are taking holidays and recharging from work. But as kids go back to school and fall approaches, will we see more forceful return-to-office mandates?

Amazon Cracks Down on “Coffee Badging” Tactics

Recently, the Seattle Times published an article about internal memos within Amazon. After more than a year of requiring employees to work from the office at least three days a week, Amazon is now considering a minimum number of hours per day to meet that mandate. This crackdown seems to be focused on “coffee badging,” a term coined in a 2023 report by the videoconferencing hardware company Owl Labs.

“Coffee badging” refers to workers who pop into the office to grab a coffee and then head home, allowing them to skirt in-office requirements but still clock the appropriate number of badge swipes. This trend extends beyond Amazon. The 2023 report found more than half of respondents at various companies said they would use this technique.

Zoom Enforces Office Returns for Nearby Employees

Ironically, Zoom, a remote work enabler during the early days of the pandemic, is also pushing return-to-office mandates for its employees. According to a recent post from YourTango.com, the RTO applies to Zoom employees within a 50-mile radius of an office so they can focus on in-person collaboration.

Zoom’s reason for returning to the office is simple — it has more products than just the video conferencing app we all know and love. Chief People Officer Matthew Saxon recently told Fortune, “I think a lot of people forget our many products and solutions that are only designed for in-office work.”

Salesforce Mandates Return to Office October 1

Similarly, Salesforce has issued return-to-office mandates starting October 1. According to an internal memo reviewed by the SF Standard, San Francisco’s largest private employer has made the call to bring the majority of its employees back into the office, reversing a broad shift to remote work during the pandemic.

Select employees in sales, workplace services, data center engineering, and onsite support technicians will be required to come to the office four to five days a week, effective Oct. 1. All other departments will be designated “office-flex” — meaning they must come in at least three days a week. Other engineering roles are also in this bucket, although they will be required to come in only at least 10 days each quarter.

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Remote Work Boosts Productivity, Study Finds

Does returning to the office really improve worker productivity? According to WorkersCompensation.com, a University of Pittsburgh professor does not see tangible improvements to businesses. Business Professor Mark Ma says his research found evidence that return-to-office mandates reduce employee satisfaction but don’t increase the bottom line. Ma says additional evidence shows that companies would benefit from allowing high-performance employees to work from home, rather than depressing employees’ morale and shareholder value by bringing them back to the office.

Ma points out that the ability to work remotely offers a better work/life balance. Working away from the office can make you feel in control of your life and give you more time to plan both work and home tasks, according to Ma. “This gives a sense of achievement and makes employees more productive,’’ the study reports. Ma found that remote and flexible schedules not only provide employees with job satisfaction, better health, and less stress, but they also benefit employers through decreased turnover and reduced absenteeism.

Remote Work Vital for Job Satisfaction, Retention

Still, some job market experts question how much power employers actually hold in mandating returns to the office. During the recent pandemic, it became commonplace to expect that a company would offer a hybrid, if not totally remote, option to remain competitive for top applicants. Nearly all, or 95 percent, of working professionals want some type of remote work, and 63 percent said remote work is the most important aspect of their job, even more than salary, according to a recent FlexJobs report.

Generally speaking, remote workers report a much higher degree of job satisfaction than those who work in a central office space. “That morale boost leads to more employee engagement, which is a good way to keep experienced employees happy and motivated, ‘’ says Ma. “It is expensive to hire and retrain new workers,’’ he adds. The U.S. Department of Labor projects that by 2025, an estimated 32.6 million Americans will be working remotely, which equates to about 22 percent of the workforce.

Office Return Reduces Productivity, Study Finds

TheHill.com highlighted a study that did not show a strong connection between returning to the office and improved productivity. In fact, employees had less deep work and focus time while in the office. For example, according to the annual report by the Office of Personnel Management, 84 percent of federal employees and managers alike believe that telework improves the quality of work and customer satisfaction. Hubstaff’s detailed analysis of remote work productivity shows that remote employees enjoy a 22 percent increase in concentrated work time.

Despite this evidence, top executives are stubbornly herding employees back to the office like lost sheep and expecting that productivity will miraculously improve. This is the very definition of insanity. One thing the rise of remote work has taught us is that the workplace can be a productivity black hole. It’s a great place for collaboration, socializing, mentoring, and on-the-job training, but focused work often gets sucked into oblivion.

For instance, a recent study by scholars at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Harvard University, and the University of Iowa found that software engineers scattered between different buildings on the same campus wrote more computer programs than those who were sitting close to colleagues. However, the engineers who worked in different buildings commented less on others’ code.

Will Remote Work End After This Summer?

Is this the final summer of remote work? Will we all go back to the way things were, or are employees passionate enough and powerful enough to take a stand?

Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Articles referenced in this post

• Amazon cracks down on ‘coffee badging,’ amid return-to-office push – seattletimes.com
• Zoom Issues A Return To Office Mandate For Its Workers — But Its ‘Chief People Officer’ Remains Remote – yourtango.com
• Salesforce mandates October return to office for most employees as layoffs continue – sfstandard.com
• New Study Reports that Forcing Remote Workers Back to the Office Hurts Productivity and Morale – workerscompensation.com
• Return-to-office mandates can’t fix stagnant post-COVID worker productivity – thehill.com

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